Hellobee

Hello hive! Sorry for being such a stranger. I’m so happy to announce to you all the arrival of our sweet baby number 3, Leila Scarlett. She joined us just after Thanksgiving and has been keeping me insanely busy ever since (and slaying us with her cuteness, which thoroughly makes up for her sleep terrorism).

As I crept toward my due date with my third child, I knew more and more that I just couldn’t wait it out past her due date. With my first, I was induced two weeks late, my second was a due date baby, and I could just sense that this little lady had no desire to find the exit. That combined with killer sciatic pain and the anxiety of arranging care for our two small kids with no local family, and my midwife team graciously agreed to schedule an induction. I was hoping for a 39-week induction, but being due so close to a major holiday meant no scheduled induction before her due date.

I was scheduled for November 29th at 8 am. My parents planned to drive in that morning, arriving in time to pick the boys up from preschool, and my husband stayed back at home to get them off to school while I took an Uber to the hospital, bag in tow. There’s something so peaceful about a third delivery, knowing what to expect. I pulled right up to the women’s hospital entrance and made my way to the delivery room to get hooked up to Pitocin. My first two births were pain-med free, so I was expecting to do the same, which isn’t ideal with so much Pitocin, but I’d survived this before and knew I could do it again. They gave me a dose of antibiotics for my Group B strep, and then started the Pitocin on a slow drip.

I’ve always had a high pain threshold, so when the Pitocin wasn’t making me uncomfortable, despite showing some contractions on the monitor, I paged the nurse and asked her to turn it up (probably not a frequent occurrence amongst induced moms). Mr. Confetti by this point had joined me at the hospital and was working on his laptop while I watched a chick flick on the in-room TV. It felt more like a vacation day from my toddlers than an induction at this point. Every hour or so, they’d turn up the Pitocin, but I wasn’t really uncomfortable. Finally, around 11 am we called our doula to come meet us at the hospital because she lives about an hour away, and from past experience, I know that my labor can turn on a dime from very uneventful to giving birth very quickly.

Lindsay, our doula, arrived, and we decided to stroll the halls, hoping gravity would help speed things along. I probably walked 5 miles in those short hallways, and despite the walking and charging Pitocin, nothing was really happening. When I arrived, I was at 2 cm, and after all that, I was just at a 3, and still not even needing to stop to deal with contractions. The nurse told me around 2:30 that by 3 pm, my midwife would come break my water. We went to the room to hang out, and 3 pm came and went as my midwife needed to tend to another mother giving birth. By this point, I was starting to feel impatient.  Finally, she came in around 4:45 and with one quick POP, my water broke, and I was at 4 cm. Within minutes, the contractions were stronger, more painful, and I knew we were moving in the right direction.

I spent the next hour and a half moving from the exercise ball at the side of the bed to the toilet, back and forth. The contractions were painful but not unbearable, and the doula and Mr. C supported me with a hot pack on my neck, gentle words of encouragement and good distractions between waves of pain. I spent my time between contractions looking at the clock. Colin, my first, was born at 10:45 and Asher, my second, was born at 6:45, so I arbitrarily decided that this baby had to be born by 6:45 pm, because my babies come at the 45’s. I remember looking at the clock at 6:20 and saying, “alright baby, you have 25 minutes to make your entrance.” (as if I have that kind of power…). Around this time, I also had made my way back from the bathroom onto the exercise ball next to the bed.

By this point, the contractions were coming strongly with decent respite between them, but within 10 minutes, they were unbearable. My midwife had come in to check on me and was sitting across from me coaching me through the contractions, and my nurse had just walked back into the room when I told them I felt like I had to push. I had been leaning back onto Mr. Confetti, and there was a scramble to try to get me into the bed, but I couldn’t get up off of the ball. I knew this baby was coming, like, right. at. that. moment.

My labor team was amazing – my hubby supported my back and the nurse and my doula each held a knee to keep me from falling over as I leaned on the slipping exercise ball, unable to get in bed. My poor midwife didn’t even have gloves on yet, and next thing you knew, after only two pushes, our baby girl made her entrance right there into the sleeves of our midwife while I lay propped by a slipping ball and three amazing human supporters. It was crazy (and this wasn’t the first time I had a super fast transition – Asher came out fast and furious too!).

The baby let out one small whimper but not a full fledged cry, and as my team helped me finally get into the bed while we were still attached by the umbilical cord, Mr. Confetti and I just kept asking why she wasn’t crying. We were feeling fairly panicked, but thankfully, she was just really calm and not especially angry about the whole birth experience. She let out a few more cries several minutes later once they cut the cord and brought her over to the bassinet to be cleaned and diapered. Thank goodness all was well, with great Apgar scores and no noteworthy concerns. They brought her to me for some skin to skin and nursing, and we lay there together, marveling at the fact that she was really here. And she beat my crazy self-imposed deadline, being born at 6:36 pm.

Overall, I’m so glad we opted for an induction this time around. It made preparing for the care of my older two very stress-free, and the labor and delivery experience was not much different for me with my induction (this one and my first) than the time I went into labor naturally on my own.